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Food Saved, Justice Served

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COURTESY OF PAUL DORPAT THEN: When Seattle Mayor George Cotterill and King County commissioners agreed to build and share office space, they called it the City-County Building. Construction began in June 1914. This view looks east across Third Avenue on the building's south side. COURTESY OF PAUL DORPAT NOW: Called the King County Courthouse these days, City Hall Park flourishes where the sign is in the historical picture.

FOR 15 TIRING years, litigants trekked along First Hill to meet with bureaucrats at the King County Courthouse at Seventh Avenue and Alder Street. Consequently, that part of the hill overlooking Pioneer Square was often called "Profanity Hill." But on May 4, 1916, the new courthouse was dedicated, and it suited the Central Business District well, for it looked more like an office building than a courthouse.

The architect of its first five floors, Augustus Warren Gould, was kicked out of the American Institute of Architects. In the book "Shaping Seattle Architecture," Dennis Anderson explains that the architect "violated professional ethics to secure this commission, siding with Pioneer Square property holders who fought relocation of city-county offices to the (Denny) regrade area." Still, Gould kept the commission, and this is the result.

Six more stories were added in 1929-31. Unfortunately, in the early 1960s, as preservation authority Lawrence Kreisman notes in his book "Made to Last," "A major remodeling (that) was intended to capture the spirit of urban renewal and cosmetically disguise the building's true age destroyed many original features of the elegant marble-clad lobbies, windows and entrance portals."

The U.S. Food Administration's sign "Food Will Win the War" certainly dates this view from sometime during World War I. In addition to soldiers, the nation was sending food to Europe, and U.S. homemakers were signed up as "kitchen soldiers." School children recited a pledge to "not eat between meals but for supper time I'll wait." These were the years when horse steaks were sold at the Pike Place Market, and the country's long march to obesity was temporarily impeded.

Paul Dorpat specializes in historical photography and has published several books on early Seattle.